Teenagers Really Need Stop Posting Their Paychecks On Instagram

I know you're excited about your #FirstPaycheckEver, but it's making it really easy for people to steal your identity.

Apparently, teenagers have been posting their first paychecks on Instagram using a couple different hashtags, and it looks like the wrong people noticed.

The U.S. Attorney's Office, Secret Service, and Minnesota officials announced on Tuesday they indicted 25 people for the biggest identity theft and bank fraud scheme in state history — and a large number of victims were from Instagram.

“Today, we have taken down the largest and most sophisticated ID theft organization in Minnesota," U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger told reporters at a press conference.

Luger said there were thousands of victims, many of which were Instagram users who shared selfies they took with their first paychecks.

The way it worked was the thieves would take the information and design of the checks posted to Instagram, re-create them, and then sent runners to the banks, attempting to cash them for hundreds of dollars.

People post photos like this and then tag them, making them pretty easy to find. Twitter users have encountered similar problems with posting photos of their debit cards.

So, once again, when in doubt, maybe just don't take a selfie.

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